Site Safe SSSP template vs a generated SSSP
Site Safe’s SSSP resources give you the format New Zealand main contractors recognise, and you fill them in yourself. A generated SSSP follows the same conventions but arrives already written for your site, trade and crew. If you have the time and the safety knowledge, the fill-in route works. If you need a plan the main contractor will accept this week, generation is faster.
What Site Safe offers
Site Safe is the construction industry’s not-for-profit safety organisation in New Zealand. Its SSSP format is the convention main contractors recognise, and it is the benchmark any SSSP is judged against. Site Safe publishes SSSP guidance and forms, and runs the safety training many main contractors expect a crew to hold.
Using Site Safe’s own resources is a legitimate way to produce your plan. What you are getting is the recognised structure, guidance notes, and blank sections that you complete for your job.
The work a fill-in template leaves with you
The structure is the easy half of an SSSP. The half that gets plans accepted or bounced is the content you write into it, and a blank template cannot do that part for you.
- •Identify the actual hazards of your work on that site, not a generic list (reg 5 of the General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations 2016)
- •Write controls in the hierarchy order reg 6 requires, specific to your gear and your crew
- •Prepare task analyses for the higher-risk tasks
- •Write an emergency plan that matches the real site, and keep every section consistent
- •Check whether any of the work is notifiable to WorkSafe (a fall of 5 m or more, an excavation deeper than 1.5 m, certain scaffolding)
What a generated SSSP does differently
A generated SSSP starts from a short questionnaire about your company, the site, the main contractor, the crew and the tasks. The plan is then written for that specific job, in the structure main contractors recognise, checked against HSWA 2015 and the General Risk and Workplace Management Regulations 2016, and delivered in minutes with the task analyses included. Ours is NZ$89 one-time, and if the main contractor asks for a change we revise it free within 24 hours.
The trade-off is the reverse of the template: the writing is done for you, but you still review it, brief your crew on it, and own it as the PCBU. No document, template or generated, replaces that duty.
Which should you choose?
- •You have safety experience, time before the job, or a Site Safe membership with resources you already use: fill in the Site Safe format yourself
- •You need an accepted plan this week, or this is your first SSSP: a generated plan gets you a site-specific document in minutes
- •Your work is unusually complex or heavily notifiable: consider a safety consultant for that job
- •Either way, keep your Site Safe training current. Training and the SSSP document are separate things, and main contractors commonly ask for both
Common questions
Will a main contractor accept a generated SSSP instead of the Site Safe booklet?
Main contractors accept SSSPs based on what is in them, not on who printed the form. What they check is that the plan is site-specific: your company, their site, the real hazards of your work and the controls for them. A generated SSSP follows the same conventions the Site Safe format established, with the site-specific content already written in.
Does a generated SSSP replace Site Safe training?
No. Training courses and prequalification schemes show your crew’s general safety competence, and many main contractors expect them. The SSSP is the document for one specific job. They sit alongside each other, and you will usually be asked for both.
Can I copy last job’s SSSP into the template for the new job?
That is the single most common reason plans get bounced. A hazard register that plainly belongs to a different site tells the main contractor the plan was not written for their job. Whatever route you choose, the content has to be redone for each site, which is the part generation automates.
Need the plan, not just the guide?
We generate a site-specific SSSP for your trade, checked against HSWA 2015 and delivered in minutes.
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